{"id":7337,"date":"2023-04-17T20:33:09","date_gmt":"2023-04-17T20:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/?p=7337"},"modified":"2023-08-04T18:40:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T18:40:53","slug":"mary-shelleys-greek-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/2023\/04\/17\/mary-shelleys-greek-odyssey\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Shelley’s Greek Odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The following is written by graduate student worker Sydnee Brown<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is usually a shock when we realize that famous historical figures and celebrities struggle with everyday things like chores or math and language homework. Well, what if we told you that the iconic Mary Shelley also struggled with learning a new language?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Shelley, \u201cThe Mother of Sci-Fi\u201d and renowned author of Frankenstein<\/em>, was born in 1797 to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, who were both known political philosophers in the latter half of the 18th century and early 19th century (de Bruin-Mol\u00e9). Shelley, unfortunately, did not get to know her mother, as Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever merely eleven days after giving birth. Godwin then took up the task of raising his and Wollstonecraft\u2019s daughter, as well as Shelley\u2019s five other siblings\u2014all of whom were either illegitimate or siblings through marriage (Bennett).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shelley was educated early on at both a dame-school as well as a short spell with Miss Caroline Petman at her school for daughters of dissenters. However, her primary educator was her father who prioritized his children\u2019s education highly. Godwin nurtured the imaginative minds of his children, and he gave Shelley the skillset and conviction to be able to instigate change as an activist. He provided Shelley a well-rounded education in history, mythology, and literature\u2014including the Bible. Not only was Shelley educated in English literature, but she was also tutored in several other languages, being fluent in both Italian and French, as well as Latin, Greek, and some Spanish. It has been said that, when she married Percy Bysshe Shelley, he tutored her in both Latin and Greek as well (Bennett).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Inside<\/a>
Inside look into Shelley’s Greek notebook<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

As a scholar in classical languages and mythology, it is no surprise that Shelley would have read from classical authors such as Homer. In the Leigh Hunt collection<\/a> where we have an assortment of books and manuscripts by and about English writer James Henry Leigh Hunt, we have one of Shelley\u2019s notebooks where she is working through translations in Ancient Greek (Leigh Hunt Collection, Ms S54G). In this notebook, Shelley is reading Homer\u2019s Odyssey<\/em> and working through a translation. She wrote down names of significant characters early on\u2014Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus\u2014and other line translations indicate that she was working through Book I, lines 114-387 (Bowers 514). This manuscript of Shelley\u2019s has received very little critical attention\u2014Will Bowers\u2019 2017 article appears to be the only comprehensive study done about the notebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the majority of this notebook is dedicated to Shelley\u2019s translations of Homer, there are also two pages containing an Italian transcription of Marco Lastri\u2019s L\u2019osservatore fiorentino sugli edifizi della sua patria<\/em> (3rd edition 1821), specifically the section where he quotes Bendetto Varchi\u2019s Storia fiorentino<\/em> (Bowers 515). Though these transcriptions are interesting, Shelley\u2019s Homer deserves a bit more scrutiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Bowers\u2019 research, this notebook can be dated back to Shelley\u2019s stay at Pisa from 1820-1822, where one of her primary tasks was to learn Greek. If she was dedicating two years of her life to the study of Ancient Greek, we can assume that she might not have been proficient in the language at this time.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"close<\/a>
Mary Shelley’s Greek notes<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Looking at her notebook, she is working her way through the text as though she is either a beginner or, at the very least, she is struggling with Homer\u2019s dialect. The pages of this notebook are filled with basic Greek words such as \u03bf\u03c5\u03ba<\/em> (not), \u03c0\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2<\/em> (all), \u03b3\u03b1\u03c1<\/em> (for), and \u03b4\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2<\/em> (god\/godlike). This vocabulary is taught to beginner Greek students early on, so it would not be a stretch to assume that Shelley was either a novice or struggling. However, it appears that she becomes more comfortable as she moves through the translations, only writing down difficult vocabulary or working through their grammatical peculiarities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Along with her vocabulary glosses, Shelley also works through sentence structure in order to translate both full and partial lines of the Greek. She parses verbs and nouns to see how they grammatically work together in the sentence, such as \u201c\u03bc\u03b5\u03bc\u03bd\u03b7\u03c3\u03ba\u03bf<\/em> a.2.mid part. n.s.f. remembering\u201d in order to fully translate the sentence, \u201cfor I desire such ahead \u2013 remembring always.\u201d From this moment, it is clear that she is attempting to reinforce grammatical concepts and better understand Homer\u2019s Greek.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shelley\u2019s translation process throughout the notebook remains much the same, and it is intriguing to watch her learn and grow from a language-learning perspective. From her notes, she seems to be reinforcing her vocabulary and grammar knowledge, and she is consistent with her methods. While Mary Shelley might have been the master and mother of sci-fi, it doesn\u2019t look like she was a master of Greek\u2014at least, not yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bennett, Betty T. “Shelley [n\u00e9e Godwin], Mary Wollstonecraft (1797\u20131851), writer.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.<\/span> 29. Oxford University Press. Date of access 4 Mar. 2023, https:\/\/www.oxforddnb.com\/view\/10.1093\/ref:odnb\/9780198614128.001.0001\/odnb-9780198614128-e-25311<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bowers, Will. \u201cOn First Looking into Mary Shelley\u2019s Homer.\u201d The Review of English Studies,<\/em> vol. 69, no. 290, 2017, pp. 510-531.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

de Bruin-Mol\u00e9, Megen. \u201c\u2018Hail, Mary, the Mother of Science Fiction\u2019: Popular Fictionalisations of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in Film and Television, 1935\u20132018.\u201d Science Fiction Film & Television,<\/em> vol. 11, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 233\u201355. DOI.org (Crossref), https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3828\/sfftv.2018.17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is written by graduate student worker Sydnee Brown It is usually a shock when we realize that famous historical figures and celebrities struggle with everyday things like chores or math and language homework. Well, what if we told you that the iconic Mary Shelley also struggled with learning a new language? Mary Shelley,Continue reading “Mary Shelley’s Greek Odyssey”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":7341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[775,773,774,368,772],"syndication":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7337"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7337"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7480,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7337\/revisions\/7480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7337"},{"taxonomy":"syndication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lib.uiowa.edu\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/syndication?post=7337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}